Americas divided-recovery-web

Center
on Education
and the Workforce
McCourt School of Public Policy
Anthony P. Carnevale
Tamara Jayasundera
Artem Gulish
AMERICA'S
DIVIDED
RECOVERY
College Haves and Have-Nots
2016

B AMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
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Center
on Education
and the Workforce
AMERICA'S
DIVIDED
RECOVERY
College Haves and Have-Nots
Anthony P. Carnevale
Tamara Jayasundera
Artem Gulish
2016

ii AMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful for the individuals and organizations whose
generous support has made this report possible: Lumina
Foundation (Jamie Merisotis and Holly Zanville), the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation (Daniel Greenstein and Jennifer Engle) and
The Joyce Foundation (Matthew Muench). We are honored to
be partners in their shared mission of promoting postsecondary
access and completion for all Americans.
Many have contributed their thoughts and feedback throughout
the production of this report. We are especially grateful for our
talented designers, meticulous editorial advisors, and trusted
printers whose tireless efforts were vital to our success. In addition,
Georgetown CEW’s economists, analysts, and communications and
operations staff were instrumental in the production of this report
from conception to publication:
• Jeff Strohl for research direction;
• Andrea Porter for strategic guidance;
• Ban Cheah for data programming;
• Martin Van Der Werf and Andrew Hanson for editorial and
qualitative feedback;
• Michael Quinn and Cary Lou for data verification;
• Hilary Strahota, Vikki Hartt, Wendy Chang, and Mantong
Guo for broad communications efforts, including design
development and public relations; and
• Joe Leonard and Coral Castro for assistance with logistics and
operations.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent those of Lumina Foundation, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, or their
officers or employees.

iiiAMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................1
The United States is in the midst of two different recoveries......................................3
The American economic divide did not start with the Great Recession. ................4
CHAPTER 1. THE GREAT RECESSION AND ITS AFTERMATH............................................7
CHAPTER 2. THE LONG-TERM SHIFT TOWARD MORE-EDUCATED WORKERS.......11
College graduates outnumber high school educated workers
in the workforce for the first time ever. ...............................................................................15
CHAPTER 3. JOB CHANGE BY OCCUPATION.........................................................................17
High-skill occupations are leading the recovery and
most of them are going to college graduates...................................................................17
Management occupations...................................................................................................21
Healthcare professional and technical occupations..................................................21
Computer and mathematical science occupations..................................................22
Food preparation and serving-related occupations.................................................22
Office and administrative support occupations........................................................23
CHAPTER 4. JOB CHANGE BY INDUSTRY............................................................................. 24
Among industries, consulting and business services
experienced the largest job growth in the recovery. ................................................... 24
Consulting and business services....................................................................................27
Financial services................................................................................................................. 28
Healthcare services.............................................................................................................. 28
Manufacturing........................................................................................................................ 29
Leisure and hospitality services......................................................................................30
Information services..............................................................................................................31
Construction.............................................................................................................................31
Natural Resources.................................................................................................................32
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................................... 33
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................... 34
APPENDIX: DATA SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY........................................................... 36

iv AMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE-HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Table of Figures and Tables
Figure I. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree have added 8.4 million jobs
in the recovery, but workers with a high school diploma or less added
only 80,000 jobs after losing 5.6 million jobs in the recession. ........................................2
Figure 1.1. The U.S. labor market has added 4.4 million net new jobs
compared to the employment level at the beginning of the Great Recession.............8
Figure 1.2. Workers with a graduate degree have experienced
stable employment growth, adding 253,000 jobs in the recession and
3.8 million jobs in the recovery, but workers with a Bachelor’s degree
have seen stronger growth more recently in the recovery, adding
4.7 million jobs. ...................................................................................................................................10
Figure 2.1. The number of workers with a Bachelor’s degree
or higher has more than doubled (107%) since 1989............................................................ 14
Figure 2.2. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher
now make up a larger share of the workforce (36%) than
workers with a high school diploma or less (34%).................................................................15
Figure 3.1. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher are taking almost
all the jobs in high- and middle-skill occupations (5.8 million high-skill
and 1.9 million middle-skill jobs) in the recovery (2010-2016).......................................... 18
Figure 4.1. While most industries have recovered their recession job
losses, construction and manufacturing are lagging substantially behind. ................25
Table 1.1. Jobs for those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have sharply
rebounded, increasing by 8.4 million in the recovery, but jobs for those with
only a high school diploma or less have not recovered, adding only 80,000 jobs
in the recovery. .....................................................................................................................................9
Table 3.1. Management occupations added the most jobs since
December 2007, 1.6 million............................................................................................................20
Table 4.1. The healthcare industry has had the largest growth since
December 2007, adding 2.2 million jobs. .................................................................................27

1AMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Introduction
The post-Great Recession economy has divided the country along a fault line
demarcated by college education. For those with at least some college education,
the job market is robust. The economy has added 11.6 million jobs since the
recession bottomed out1
— 11.5 million, or 99 percent of them, have gone to
workers with at least some college education.2
By contrast, workers with a high school diploma or less hear about an economic
recovery and wonder what people are talking about. Of the 7.2 million jobs lost in
the recession, 5.6 million were jobs for workers with a high school diploma or less.3
These workers have recovered only 1 percent of those job losses over the past six
years. This group also saw no growth among well-paying jobs with benefits. 4
These divergent trends did not begin with the Great Recession, but the recession
and subsequent recovery have intensified the long-term trends of differential
opportunities between workers with and without a college education, reinforced
by skill-biased technological and structural change.
1 Officially, the Great Recession covered the 18-month period from December 2007 to June 2009. However,
since the economy did not begin adding jobs until January 2010, this study delineates The Great Recession as
the period from December 2007 to January 2010 and the recovery as the period from January 2010 to January
2016.
2 The data on job trends for this paper come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of
households by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
3 For a more detailed discussion of the impact of the recession by education, industry, and occupation see
Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Cheah, The College Advantage: Weathering the Economic Storm, 2012.
4 Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Gulish, Good Jobs Are Back: College Graduates Are First in Line, 2015.

2 AMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Figure I. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree have added 8.4 million jobs in the
recovery, but workers with a high school diploma or less added only 80,000 jobs
after losing 5.6 million jobs in the recession.
Source: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Current Population
Survey (CPS) data, 2007-2016.
Note: Employment includes all workers age 18 and older. The monthly employment numbers are seasonally
adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed using a four-month moving average.
Bachelor's degree
or higher
Associate's degree
or some college
High school
or less
EmploymentChange(millions)
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
Apr-16
Nov-15
Jun-15
Jan-15
Aug-14
Mar-14
Oct-13
May-13
Dec-12
Jul-12
Feb-12
Sep-11
Apr-11
Nov-10
Jun-10
Jan-10
Aug-09
Mar-09
Oct-08
May-08
Dec-07
Recession Recovery Gained 8.4 million jobs
in the recovery
Gained 187,000 jobs
Gained 3.1 million jobs
in the recovery
Gained 80,000 jobs
in the recovery
Lost 1.8 million jobs
Lost 5.6 million jobs

THE UNITED STATES IS IN THE MIDST
OF TWO DIFFERENT RECOVERIES.
The Great Recession has been followed by a lengthy and inconsistent recovery. After
a slow start in the early years of the recovery, the economy has added 11.6 million jobs
since January 2010. Behind the positive job growth, however, two starkly different
realities have fueled the escalating economic divisions in the country. Almost all the
new jobs have gone to workers with at least some postsecondary education, while
jobs for high school graduates have barely grown at all.
• Nearly all the jobs created in the recovery, 11.5 million out of 11.6 million, have
gone to workers with at least some postsecondary education.
-- During the recession, the economy created 253,000 new jobs for
graduate degree holders and added 3.8 million more jobs during the
recovery, a total of more than 4 million jobs created since 2007.
-- Despite losing some jobs during the recession, Bachelor’s degree
holders gained the most jobs in the recovery. These workers
recovered the 66,000 jobs they lost in the recession by August 2010,
and, by January 2016, they had added 4.6 million more new jobs.
-- Combined, the workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have
accounted for 73 percent (8.4 million) of the 11.6 million jobs gained in
the recovery.
-- Compared to workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, job losses
during the Great Recession were more severe for workers with an
Associate’s degree or some college. But these workers recouped the
1.8 million jobs they lost during the recession by September 2012, and
they added 1.3 million new jobs as of January 2016 — a turnaround of
more than 3 million new jobs.

• Workers with at least some postsecondary education have also captured
the vast majority of the good jobs — jobs that pay more than $53,000 per
year for full-time, full-year workers and come with benefits, such as employer
provided health insurance and a retirement plan.5
• At the other end of the education spectrum, workers with a high school diploma
or less essentially have experienced no job recovery. So far, they have gained
80,000 jobs in the recovery, just a tiny fraction of the 5.6 million jobs that were
lost by these workers in the recession.
• For the first time, workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher make up a
larger proportion of the workforce (36 percent) than workers with a high
school diploma or less (34 percent). This marks the continued turning away
from the industrial economy of the past that largely employed workers with a
high school education.
• Workers with a high school diploma or less are losing access to high-skill and
middle-skill jobs, and increasingly are settling for low-skill, low-wage jobs.
These workers lost 181,000 high-skill jobs and 951,000 middle-skill jobs since
2010. At the same time, they added 1.2 million low-skill jobs.
THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC DIVIDE DID NOT
START WITH THE GREAT RECESSION.
Cyclical changes and structural changes have led to a shift from an economy driven
by high school-educated labor to one in which almost two in three jobs require some
form of postsecondary education or training. These economic changes, increasingly
noticeable in recent years, have been marked by long-term economic trends:6
• There has been a clear shift in job creation since the second half of 20th
century toward industries that employ a high share of workers with
postsecondary attainment, such as healthcare services, consulting and
business services, financial services, education services, and government
services. These industries accounted for 28 percent of the workforce in 1947;
they now account for 46 percent of the workforce.7
5 Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Gulish, Good Jobs Are Back: College Graduates Are First in Line, 2015.
6 For a more careful review of these trends, see Carnevale and Rose, The Undereducated American, 2011 and
Carnevale and Rose, The Economy Goes to College: The Hidden Promise of Higher Education in the Post-
Industrial Service Economy, 2015.
7 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Current Employment Statistics data,
1947 and Current Population Survey, 2016.

• An equally clear shift in job creation has taken place away from production
industries, which had a large number of workers with lower average levels
of educational attainment, such as manufacturing, construction, and natural
resources. These industries employed nearly half of the workforce in 1947; by
2016, they employed just 19 percent of the workforce.
• Even in declining production industries, hiring is shifting in favor of workers
with higher levels of educational attainment. For example, employment in
manufacturing has declined by 32 percent since the second half of the 1980s.
At the same time, however, the employment of workers with a Bachelor’s
degree or higher in these industries grew by 70 percent.8
These are among the many long-term trends that have increasingly divided the
country into “college haves” and “college have-nots.” College access and success
have been the defining factors in the growing economic divide in America since
the early 1980s. That is when the wage premium for college graduates began its
meteoric rise.9
Since that time, access to college programs with labor market value
has accounted for as much as 80 percent of increase in economic inequality.10
In addition, the value added in virtually every industry has required new
production recipes with higher concentrations of postsecondary workers. In
food production, for example, high school-educated farming and manufacturing
workers have given way to skilled white-collar workers who add quality, variety,
customization, convenience, and other product improvements to the value chain.
Recessions and economic recoveries only strengthen and accelerate the
economically divisive effects of these long-term structural changes. The
acceleration of these structural trends may well be one reason the Great Recession’s
employment effects are prolonged and the recovery slowed. At their worst, these
trends result in “jobless growth,” a situation in which GDP growth in recoveries
proceeds without a corresponding growth in jobs or even higher unemployment.11
8 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Current Population Survey, 1980-
2014.
9 The wage premium for postsecondary education and training over a high school diploma has increased
dramatically since the 1980s, but there is wide variation in the economic value of postsecondary awards by field
of study. In addition, the hierarchy in the traditional levels of postsecondary education only roughly conforms
to the hierarchy of economic value. Postsecondary training on the job and industry-based certifications
outperform many postsecondary certificates and degrees conferred by educational institutions. Some academic
certificates outperform some two-year and four-year degrees. Almost a third of two-year Associate’s degrees
outperform the average earnings for a Bachelor’s degree and more than 40 percent of Bachelor’s degrees
outperform the average earnings for a graduate degree. For more details, see: Carnevale, Rose, and Cheah,
The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings, 2011; Carnevale and Rose, The Undereducated
American, 2011; and Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Hanson, Career and Technical Education: Five Ways That Pay
Along the Way to the B.A., 2012
10 Autor, “Skills, Education, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality among the ‘other 99 percent,’” 2014; Goldin and
Katz, ”Long-Run Changes in the Wage Structure: Narrowing, Widening, Polarizing,” 2007.
11 We have experienced spells of jobless growth in the last three recoveries: following the 1990-91 recession,
the 2001-2003 recession, and the Great Recession of 2007-10. For a comparison of jobless growth following
the 2007-10 recession with previous recovery periods and a discussion of the relationship between job
polarization and jobless recoveries, see Jaimovich and Siu, “The Trend Is the Cycle: Job Polarization and Jobless
Recoveries,” 2012. For a review of jobless growth in recoveries following the 1990-91 recession and the 2001-03
recession, see Groshen and Potter, “Has Structural Change Contributed to a Jobless Recovery?,” 2003.

These underlying structural changes ensure that those who benefit from economic
progress do not tend to be the same people who are hurt by it. Since the 1980s,
those harmed the most have been high school-educated workers in blue-collar
jobs, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Those who benefit the most,
on the other hand, are college-educated workers in high-skill professions in service
industries. In recent recessions, the industries and occupations that lost the most
jobs are much less likely to be the industries and occupations that are adding jobs
in the recovery.
The Great Recession has followed this classic pattern in terms of how workers
with different education levels are affected during recessions. The least educated
workers, those with a high school diploma or less, were the first fired in the
recession and the last hired in the recovery. Conversely, those with the most years
of college were the last fired in the recession and the first hired in the recovery.
The major reason why jobs for high school graduates have not recovered from the
Great Recession is the structural shift in blue-collar and white-collar jobs.
• Two of the industries that blue-collar workers with lower education levels
historically depended upon for jobs — construction and manufacturing — were
especially hard hit in the Great Recession and have not yet fully recovered all
the job losses they sustained. Construction employment is still 1.6 million jobs
short of its 2007 level. Manufacturing has 1 million fewer jobs than it did before
the recession.
• Office and administrative support is the largest major occupational group
overall. These are quintessential middle-skill, white-collar jobs for workers
without a college degree. However, in the Great Recession, 1.7 million of these
jobs were lost. Only 300,000 of those jobs have been recovered. So, compared
to pre-recession employment levels, office and administrative support
occupations have experienced the second-highest decline in jobs (1.4 million).

CHAPTER 1.
The Great Recession
and Its Aftermath
The Great Recession was a tremendous shock to the U.S. economy.12
The statistics
are staggering: the economy lost 7.2 million jobs;13
the drop in housing prices
caused net wealth to decline by $9 trillion; and the slowdown in economic growth
cost more than $6 trillion.14
The total cost of the recession — including the decline
in retirement funds, skill erosion from long-term unemployment, and physical,
psychological, and social impact — exceeded $20 trillion.
Even now, six years after the Great Recession ended, its effect is still with us.
The economy is still missing 6 million jobs that would have been created had
the recession not occurred.15
12 The academic definition of the recession set by the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of
Economic Research describes the recession as the period between the peak and trough of economic activity,
which for the Great Recession covers the 18-month period from December 2007 to June 2009. Since the
economy did not begin adding jobs until January 2010, this paper delineates the Great Recession as the period
from December 2007 to January 2010 and the recovery as the period from January 2010 to January 2016.
13 The data on job losses (7.2 million) for this paper come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a
monthly survey of households by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, the
CPS household survey shows smaller job losses than the monthly survey of employer establishments — the
Current Employment Statistics (CES) data. According to the CES, 8.7 million jobs were lost in the recession
(December 2007 – January 2010). The CES data is often used to measure job losses and gains because it is the
official source used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its monthly jobs report. These differences in estimates
of job losses can be attributed to differences in the two surveys — the Labor Department’s establishment
survey (CES) and the Census Bureau’s establishment household survey (CPS). We prefer the Census Bureau’s
household survey (CPS) because the establishment survey (CES) does not include self-employment and
agricultural employment and counts multiple-job holders more than once. Overall, both sources tell a similar
story about large job losses in the recession and slow job gains in the recovery.
14 Government Accountability Office, Financial Regulatory Reform: Financial Crisis Losses and the Potential Impact
of the Dodd-Frank Act, 2013.
15 If the pre-recession job growth trends continued, the economy would have added another 6.4 million jobs by
2015. Roughly half of those jobs (3.4 million) would have been for people with a Bachelor’s degree or better;
2 million would have been for people with some college or an Associate’s degree; and 1 million would have
been for people with a high school diploma or less. See Carnevale, Jayasundera, and Gulish, The Six Million
Missing Jobs, 2015.

The jobs recovery began in January 2010, but during its first year and a half, the
economy added jobs at a sluggish pace, resulting in concerns that the economic
recovery would be a jobless one. It took more than four years to regain the 7.2
million jobs lost in the recession — the labor market reached that milestone in
April 2014.16
Today, total U.S. employment is at 148.5 million — with 4.4 million
more jobs than there were prior to the recession, in December 2007 (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1. The U.S. labor market has added 4.4 million net new jobs compared to
the employment level at the beginning of the Great Recession.
16 The academic definition of the recession set by the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of
Economic Research describes the recession as the 18-month period from December 2007 to June 2009. Since
the economy did not begin adding jobs until January 2010, this paper uses the broader definition of the word
“recession” as a period of reduced economic activity and, therefore, defines the recession as the period from
December 2007 to January 2010.
Totalemployment
130,000,000
134,000,000
138,000,000
142,000,000
146,000,000
150,000,000
May-16
Sep-15
Jan-15
May-14
Sep-13
Jan-13
May-12
Sep-11
Jan-11
May-10
Sep-09
Jan-09
May-08
Sep-07
Jan-07
May-06
Sep-05
Jan-05
May-04
Sep-03
Jan-03
144.1 million
148.5 million
4.4 million
jobs over the
pre-recession
employment

The recovery between January 2010 and January 2016 has favored workers with
a Bachelor’s degree or higher the most (Table 1.1). Of the 11.6 million jobs created
so far during the recovery, nearly 75 percent (or 8.4 million) have gone to people
with a Bachelor’s degree or higher.
Table 1.1. Jobs for those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have sharply rebounded,
increasing by 8.4 million in the recovery, but jobs for those with only a high school
diploma or less have not recovered, adding only 80,000 jobs in the recovery.
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT CHANGE IN EMPLOYMENT
RECESSION
(Dec. 2007
to Jan. 2010)
RECOVERY
(Jan. 2010 to
Jan. 2016)
NET CHANGE
(Dec. 2007
to Jan. 2016)
High school or less -5,611,000 80,000 -5,531,000
Some college/Associate’s degree -1,752,000 3,089,000 1,337,000
Bachelor’s degree or higher 187,000 8,424,000 8,611,000
Bachelor’s degree -66,000 4,656,000 4,590,000
Master’s degree or higher 253,000 3,768,000 4,021,000
All -7,176,000 11,593,000 4,417,000
Note: Columns may not sum due to rounding. Employment includes all workers age 18 and older. The
monthly employment numbers are seasonally adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and
smoothed using a four-month moving average.
Workers with a graduate degree (Master’s degree or higher) experienced no
decline in jobs in the recession and maintained a stable employment growth
throughout the recovery. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree struggled until
the second half of 2011, but have since seen fast job growth, and in fact have
exceeded the gains of graduate degree holders (Figure 1.2). Workers with a
graduate degree have gained 3.8 million jobs since January 2010. Over the same
period, workers with a Bachelor’s degree have gained 4.6 million jobs.
Workers with some college or an Associate’s degree have experienced a lot of
volatility since 2007. They rode the recession to its depths, losing 1.8 million jobs.
Those workers have now ridden the recovery back up; the economy recovered
all those jobs by mid-2012. Over the next three and a half years, this group of
workers experienced decent job growth, with a net gain of 1.3 million jobs since
the beginning of the recession. Overall, this group of workers has added 3.1 million
jobs since January 2010.

The workers who have suffered the most are those with a high school diploma or
less. They lost the most jobs in the recession and have seen almost no growth in
the job market during the recovery. They remain 5.5 million jobs short of their pre-
recession employment level. Further, the current economic trends fail to provide
any sign that those lost jobs will be returning in the near future.
Figure 1.2. Workers with a graduate degree have experienced stable employment
growth, adding 253,000 jobs in the recession and 3.8 million jobs in the recovery,
but workers with a Bachelor’s degree have seen stronger growth more recently in
the recovery, adding 4.7 million jobs
Associate's
degree or
some college
Bachelor's
degree
Master's
degree or
higher
High school
or less
EmploymentChange(millions)
-8
-7
-6
-5
-4
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
3
4
5
Feb-12Jan-10
Apr-16
Nov-15
Jun-15
Jan-15
Aug-14
Mar-14
Oct-13
May-13
Dec-12
Jul-12
Feb-12
Sep-11
Apr-11
Nov-10
Jun-10
Jan-10
Aug-09
Mar-09
Oct-08
May-08
Dec-07
Recession Recovery
Workers with
Master’s degrees
or higher gained
253,000 jobs in
the recesssion, and
then gained
3.8 million jobs
in the recovery
Workers with Bachelor’s degrees lost
66,000 jobs in the recession, but then
gained 4.7 million jobs in the recovery

CHAPTER 2.
The Long-Term
Shift toward
More-Educated Workers
These diverging trends in job growth are part of a long-term pattern. Our analysis
of the Great Recession and the recovery that followed it affirms that structural
economic trends in place since the second half of the 20th century are still going
strong and in fact have accelerated in the 21st century. These trends have been
driven by technological advancements, and they incorporate two concurrent and
related economic developments: the growing capabilities of industry and the
growing complexity of work.
The advancements in technology, especially exponential growth in computer
processing power and digital data storage, have enabled us to produce
and supply goods and services more efficiently than ever before; improve
business processes across the board; make better decisions, supported by
data; and achieve breakthrough discoveries in scientific, medical, financial, and
communications fields. At the same time, these technological advancements have
bolstered the number and granularity of options available to organizations and
underlined the importance of precision in business decisions. The growing array of
options, along with the increasing sophistication of available tools, has raised the
complexity of many tasks that workers must be able to perform today. Two recent
instances can be seen as focal points of these trends.
The first took place in the early 1980s. Prior to that time, in the golden age of the
industrial economy, from the late 1940s through the 1970s, job losses in recessions
tended to be temporary. The median duration of unemployment in the 1970s
was six weeks, compared to eight weeks in the early 2000s before the Great
Recession, and 17 weeks in the past five years of the recovery.17
Workers who
were laid off in recessions tended to be re-hired in recoveries, often with the same
employer, or at least in the same industry or occupation.18
Throughout most of the
20th century, traditional blue-collar factory jobs offered a pathway to the middle
class for many Americans, especially men.
17 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor
Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, “Median weeks unemployed, seasonally adjusted (Series ID:
LNS13008276),” 1970-2016.
18 Groshen, “Has Structural Change Contributed to a Jobless Recovery?,” 2003.

Since the 1980s, the shift in
employment has favored professional
service industries, which have
relatively higher concentrations
of workers with postsecondary
education and training, at the expense
of traditional factory jobs.19
With the
advent of the postindustrial service
economy, job losses were no longer
temporary, especially for high school-
educated production workers. These
structural changes were turbocharged
in the increasingly Darwinian world of
recessions and recoveries, especially
since the early 1990s. Those who lost
jobs were less likely to be re-hired by
the same employer, the same industry, or even in the same occupation. Overall job
security declined, especially for high school-educated production workers.20
The second focal point happened in the early 2000s, with the onset of the
digital information age. In 2000, three-quarters of the world’s information was
stored on paper and on analog formats, such as audio and videotapes. By 2002,
digital storage surpassed analog storage and, by 2007, 94 percent of the world’s
information was stored digitally.21
This change has had a profound impact on traditional middle-skill white-collar
clerical jobs that had been prevalent in the second half of the 20th century,
especially for women. Personal computers have reduced the need for typists and
personal secretaries. With the reduction in the use of paper, the need for file clerks
to organize, store, and retrieve paper records has virtually disappeared. As email
has increasingly replaced postal mail, the need for post office clerks, mailroom
workers, and correspondence clerks has fallen off.
19 Carnevale and Rose, The Economy Goes to College: The Hidden Promise of Higher Education in the Post-
20 Boisjoly, Duncan, and Smeeding, “The Shifting Incidence of Involuntary Job losses from 1968 to 1992,” 1998;
Kletzer, “Job Displacement,” 1998.
21 Vastag, “Exabytes: Documenting the 'Digital Age' and Huge Growth in Computing Capacity,” 2011.
Construction and
manufacturing were
especially hard hit in the
Great Recession and have
not yet fully recovered
all the job losses they
sustained.

Financial software has simplified many of the financial record-keeping tasks
businesses have to perform, reducing the need for bookkeeping and accounting
clerks. Electronic calendars, scheduling tools, and online travel booking tools have cut
down on the need for secretaries, administrative assistants, and travel agents. Data-
entry office workers — who experienced high demand in the early days of digitization,
as organizations sought to convert paper forms and records into digital form — are
now not needed by many organizations, as information is entered directly into digital
platforms by the end users.
Technology automates repetitive
tasks, leaving more complex non-
repetitive tasks to more highly
educated postsecondary workers.22
Moreover, these changes have been
occurring in the context of new
networked organizational formats
driven by measured outcome
standards. These performance-driven
networked systems are more flexible,
efficient, and innovative, and they also
require a more skilled workforce.
The growing demand for a skilled workforce is evident in the divergent growth
of jobs for workers with different levels of educational attainment. Between 1989
and 2016, total employment grew by 31 percent, from 114 million to 149 million
jobs — a net increase of 35 million jobs. Yet the number of jobs for workers with
a high school diploma or less actually declined by 13 percent over that period, a
loss of 7.3 million jobs (Figure 2.1). The net decline in employment for those with
a high school diploma or less suggests that many of the job openings for these
workers are a result of high turnover in jobs that already existed rather than an
expansion of the workforce.
22 Acemoglu and Autor, “Skills, Tasks, and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings,” 2010.
The value added in virtually
every industry has required
new production recipes
with higher concentrations
of postsecondary workers.

Figure 2.1. The number of workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher has more
than doubled (107%) since 1989.
Meanwhile, the number of jobs for workers with at least some college has steadily
expanded. The number of jobs held by workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher
has more than doubled since 1989, from 26 million to 54.2 million. The number of
jobs for workers with an Associate’s degree or some college has increased by 47
percent, from 30 million to 43.5 million, over the same period.
From 1989 to 1995, the growth in jobs for workers with an Associate’s degree or
some college matched the rate of job growth for workers with a Bachelor’s degree,
but since 1995, the rate of job growth for Associate’s degree holders has slowed.
However, the employment growth for workers with this level of education is still
slowly chugging along, rising by 8 percent during the recovery years (2010-2016).
-0.2
-0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1989
Recession
Bachelor's degree or higher
Associate's degree or some college
High school or less
Percentchangeinemployment
74%
107%
42%
47%
-4%
-13%

COLLEGE GRADUATES OUTNUMBER HIGH
SCHOOL-EDUCATED WORKERS IN THE
WORKFORCE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
The recession and recovery have hastened a long-term change in the composition
of the American workforce. In 2016, for the first time ever, workers with a
Bachelor’s degree or higher comprise a larger proportion of the workforce than
those with a high school diploma or less. Workers with a high school diploma or
less now make up 34 percent of the workforce, 5 percentage points less than
in 2007, when the recession began. Meanwhile, the share of workers with a
Bachelor’s degree or higher increased from 32 percent to 36 percent (Figure 2.2).
These workers also now earn 57 percent of all wages.23
Including workers with an
Associate’s degree or some college, workers with postsecondary education now
make up 65 percent of total employment.
Figure 2.2. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher now make up a larger share
of the workforce (36%) than workers with a high school diploma or less (34%).
Survey (CPS) data, 2007, 2016.
23 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS),
March Supplement data, 2015,
0
20
40
60
80
100
Master's degree
or higher
Bachelor's degree
Associate's degree/
some college
High school diploma
Less than high school
2016 (January)2007 (December)
9%
30%
29%
21%
11%
8%
26%
30%
23%
13%
BA+
32%
BA+
36%
HS or
less
39%
HS or
less
34%
Shareofworkforce

The human cost of these trends for workers without postsecondary
education, their families, and their communities has been immense.
As factories and mines have closed and office and administrative
support functions have been automated, men and women without
a college education — who were previously able to build a middle-
class life and raise a family — found themselves out of a job, often for
prolonged periods of time and, in some cases, even detached from the
labor force.24
The labor force participation rate has declined from 66.5
percent in 1989 to 63 percent in 2016.25
Those who were lucky enough
to find another job after being laid off or displaced often did so at
a price — lower wages, which often take decades to rebuild to
their pre-displacement levels.26
This economic state of affairs
has had a traumatic impact, even on sectors of the population
that have historically fared reasonably well in American society.
Specifically, these economic trends are likely the major culprits
behind growing rates of suicides and substance abuse that have
led to increases in death rates and the prevalence of illness
among middle-aged whites since the end of the last century.27
The
negative effects of joblessness have even been shown to transcend
generations, with children whose fathers have been displaced from
their jobs earning 9 percent lower annual wages as adults compared to
similar children whose fathers did not face this challenge.28
24 For more on the plight of men who lost blue-collar jobs and declining industrial communities where they leave,
see Luhby, “The Men America Has Left Behind,” 2016.
25 Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Labor Force Participation
Rate (seasonally adjusted)” series, Current Population Survey, 1989-2013.
26 Leubsdorf, “The Recession’s Economic Trauma Has Left Enduring Scars,” 2016.
27 Case and Deaton, “Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st
Century,” 2015.
28 Oreopoulos, Page, and Stevens, “The Intergenerational Effects of Worker Displacement,” 2008.

CHAPTER 3.
Job Change
by Occupation
HIGH-SKILL OCCUPATIONS ARE LEADING THE
RECOVERY AND MOST OF THEM ARE GOING TO
COLLEGE GRADUATES.
The growing demand for workers with post-secondary qualifications is ever more
tightly tied to occupations and the skills they require and, consequently, more
loosely tied to industries. This concept is critical to understanding the forces that
drive educational demand and to understanding what shapes the U.S. job market.
Regardless of the industry, occupations have similar job requirements and wages.
Accountants perform comparable tasks whether they are working for a mining
company or a hospital — the training required to do the work is virtually the
same and the pay tends to be similar. If the tasks of a particular job require a high
degree of skill, the demand for workers with postsecondary education or training
will be high, regardless of industry.
The job growth by occupation during the Great Recession and subsequent
recovery demonstrates how changes in occupational composition have
contributed to a growing demand for more educated workers. Based on the
education level of incumbents, this report designates the 23 major occupation
groups into three categories (see Table 3.1). High-skill occupations are those for
which 50 percent or more of workers have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Middle-
skill occupations are those for which 50 percent to 75 percent of workers have at
least some postsecondary education. Low-skill occupations are those for which at
least 50 percent have no education beyond high school.

Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher have taken nearly all of the jobs in
high-skill occupations added in the recovery, almost 5.8 million out of 6.4 million
jobs. They have also experienced sizable gains in middle-skill occupations during
the recovery, adding 1.9 million such jobs (Figure 3.1). Their largest job gains
are in occupations such as computer and mathematical science; management;
healthcare professional and technical; and business and finance (Table 3.1).
Workers with a graduate degree have had the most job gains (83%) in high-
skill occupations during the recovery. For workers with a Bachelor’s degree, 57
percent of job gains have come in high-skill occupations. The largest job growth
for the workers with a graduate degree was among healthcare professional and
technical occupations, such as doctors; pharmacists; nurses; and lab technicians.
Figure 3.1. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher are taking almost all the
jobs in high- and middle-skill occupations (5.8 million high-skill and 1.9 million
middle-skill jobs) in the recovery (2010-2016).
High-skill occupations are those for which 50 percent or more of workers have a Bachelor’s degree or
higher. Middle-skill occupations are those for which 50 percent to 75 percent of workers have at least some
postsecondary education. Low-skill occupations are those for which at least 50 percent have no education
beyond high school.
0
1,000,000
2,000,000
3,000,000
4,000,000
5,000,000
6000,000
7,000,000
8,000,000
Bachelor's degree or higher
Associate's degree or some college
HS diploma or less
High-skill
occupations
Middle-skill
occupations
Low-skill
occupations
-2,000,000
-1,000,000
5,775,000
778,000
-181,000
-951,000
551,000
1,922,000
727,000
1,761,000
1,212,000
Employmentchangefrom2010to2016

Workers with an Associate’s degree
or some college have gotten some (1.3
million) high- and middle-skill jobs,
in such occupations as business and
financial operations; computer and
mathematical science; sales; personal
care and services; and healthcare
support. However, the majority (1.8
million or 58 percent) of the jobs
gained by these workers are in low-
skill areas, such as transportation;
production; and installation,
maintenance and repair occupations.
Workers with an Associate’s degree
or some college are seeing substantially fewer job opportunities in office and
administrative support, which was one of the prime middle-skill occupation areas
for these workers prior to the recession.
For those with a high school diploma or less, low-skill jobs have been just about
the only jobs available. These workers have continued to lose jobs in high- and
middle-skill occupations (181,000 and 951,000 jobs lost, respectively). They have
managed to gain 1.5 million low-skill jobs, particularly in blue-collar occupations,
such as production; installation, maintenance, and repair; and transportation.
These occupation and education trends have not been isolated to the Great
Recession and recovery. Since the 1980s, workers with a high school diploma or
less have been struggling to maintain their footing in a labor market increasingly
defined by the higher-skilled occupations. Of all the jobs added since 1989, 73
percent have been in high-skill occupations, especially management; health
professional and technical; and education and training. Of these high-skill jobs, 83
percent have gone to workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher.
College access and
success are the defining
factors in the growing
economic divide in
America since the
early 1980s.

Table 3.1. Management occupations have added the most jobs since December 2007,
1.6 million.
MAJOR OCCUPATION GROUP
RECESSION
Job change from Dec. 2007-
Jan. 2010 (in thousands)
RECOVERY
Job change from Jan. 2010-
NET CHANGE
Job change from Dec.2007-
High
school
or less
Some
college
/AA
BA or
higher
Total
High
school
or less
Some
college
/AA
BA or
higher
Total
High
school
or less
Some
college
/AA
BA or
higher
Total
HIGH-SKILL
Management -43 -29 -277 -349 23 291 1,611 1,925 -20 262 1,334 1,576
Healthcare professional and
technical
131 205 31 367 -28 182 1,007 1,162 103 387 1,038 1,528
Computer and mathematical
science
-9 26 -50 -33 0 79 920 1,000 -8 104 870 966
Business and financial operations 52 -150 8 -91 -94 148 886 940 -42 -2 894 850
Education, training, and library -38 69 299 330 -65 -29 264 170 -103 40 562 499
Community and social services 10 74 -1 83 -22 26 296 300 -12 100 295 383
Arts, design, entertainment,
sports, and media
13 -15 25 23 -7 47 297 337 6 32 322 360
Life and physical science 12 -14 27 25 -1 21 146 166 11 8 172 191
Architecture and engineering -27 -138 -65 -229 21 34 281 337 -6 -104 217 108
Legal -28 24 43 39 -11 -26 74 38 -39 -1 117 77
Social science 9 -10 19 19 2 3 -7 -1 12 -6 12 17
MIDDLE-SKILL
Personal care and service 48 179 71 297 8 151 253 412 56 329 324 709
Healthcare support 24 214 46 284 -89 180 61 152 -65 394 107 435
Protective service 63 53 93 210 -167 -106 249 -24 -104 -53 342 186
Sales and related -396 -392 -188 -976 -226 298 643 715 -622 -95 455 -261
Office and administrative support -1,154 -627 66 -1,715 -477 28 716 267 -1,631 -599 781 -1,449
LOW-SKILL
Food preparation and serving-
related
-172 140 94 62 354 207 92 653 182 348 186 715
Building and grounds cleaning
and maintenance
-127 33 28 -66 164 153 71 389 37 187 99 323
Installation, maintenance, and
repair
-404 -239 77 -566 291 460 31 782 -114 222 108 216
Transportation and material
moving
-575 -215 5 -786 157 572 262 991 -418 357 267 205
Farming, fishing, and forestry -47 -6 16 -36 74 79 38 191 28 73 54 155
Production -1,393 -403 -123 -1,919 161 371 167 700 -1,232 -32 44 -1,219
Construction and extraction -1,560 -532 -56 -2,148 11 -82 66 -5 -1,549 -614 10 -2,153
Total -5,611 -1,752 187 -7,176 80 3,089 8,424 11,593 -5,531 1,337 8,611 4,417
Note: Employment includes all workers age 18 and older. The monthly employment numbers are seasonally adjusted
using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed using four-month moving average.

Management occupations
Management occupations include employees with general responsibility for
strategic decision-making and day-to-day decision-making at a policy level. This
high-skill occupation group added the most jobs of any major occupation group
since the beginning of the recession in December 2007 (1.6 million jobs). Much
of the long-term growth in these occupations comes as a result of the increasing
complexity of the business landscape, as employers try to function in ever more
complicated networks and regulatory environments, while coping with fast-paced
economic and technological changes.
The management occupations group has also added more jobs for workers with a
Bachelor’s degree or higher than any other occupation group since December 2007.
These occupations added 1.3 million jobs for workers with a Bachelor’s degree or
higher over the past eight years, accounting for 16 percent of all jobs added for this
highly educated group of workers.
Healthcare professional and technical occupations
Healthcare professional and technical occupations added the second-largest
number of jobs of all major occupation groups since December 2007 (1.5 million
jobs). These high-skill occupations — which include registered nurses; physicians;
surgeons; therapists and lab technicians; among others — are at the center of
the fast-growing healthcare services industry (see the discussion of healthcare
services in the following section on industries). As the population ages and as
advances in pharmaceuticals, medical technology, and healthcare practices make
it possible to treat more illnesses, demand for these services continues to grow.
These positions tend to be geared toward workers with postsecondary education.
Jobs for workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher accounted for two out of
every three jobs added in this occupation group between December 2007 and
January 2016. Because these occupations involve high levels of risk to the safety
and well-being of patients, they tend to have some of the highest education
requirements in the economy. Among workers in these occupations, 31 percent
have a Master’s degree or higher. Not surprisingly, 45 percent of all healthcare
professional and technical jobs added between December 2007 and January 2016
were for workers with a graduate degree.

= Computer and mathematical science occupations
Workers in computer and mathematical science occupations help institutions and
individuals keep up with the rapid pace of technological change and development
in network applications. Computers have been playing an integral role in the
technological change the U.S. economy has been undergoing in recent years. As a
result, computer and mathematical science occupations are experiencing growing
demand across all industries. This occupation group has added the third-most jobs
among high-skill occupations since December 2007 (966,000 jobs).
Computer and mathematical science occupations increasingly favor workers
with postsecondary education. These occupations added 870,000 jobs for
workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, and 104,000 jobs for workers with
some college or an Associate’s degree since December 2007. At the same time,
computer and mathematical science jobs for workers with a high school diploma
or less declined by 8,000.
Food preparation and serving-related occupations
Food preparation and serving-related occupations are low-skill, low-wage
occupations covering workers involved in preparing and serving food in
restaurants and fast-food establishments. These occupations had the highest
growth among low-skill occupations, adding 715,000 jobs between December
2007 and January 2016. However, to some extent, the job gains in these
occupations are overstated in the
data because many of these jobs are
part-time. Some of the jobs in this
occupation group are first jobs that
people take while they are in school,
or temporary stepping-stones toward
better-paying jobs in occupations
that require a higher level of skills.
However, for some workers with a
high school diploma or less, these
occupations have been one of the few
areas of the economy with growing job
opportunities over the past eight years.
After experiencing job losses in the recession, food preparation and serving-
related occupations added 354,000 jobs for workers with a high school diploma
or less during the recovery, more than any other occupation group.
The post-Great Recession
economy has divided the
country along a fault line
demarcated by college
education.

Office and administrative support occupations
This occupation group has had the second-largest decline in employment
between December 2007 and January 2016, shedding 1.4 million jobs. While much
of the focus has been on jobs lost in the construction and production occupations
(see the discussion of construction and manufacturing industries in the following
section on industries), the job losses in office and administrative occupations
may have had even more impact, primarily because they are broadly disbursed
throughout the economy.
These occupations have been some
of the most common middle-skill,
white-collar jobs in recent decades,
especially for women. As a result,
the employment decline in office and
administrative support occupations
has substantially contributed to
the reshaping of the labor market.
Office and administrative support
occupations have been declining
since 2000, as digital information storage has replaced paper,29
reducing the
need for filing clerks; post office clerks; and correspondence clerks. In addition,
increasing automation with new computer technologies has reduced the demand
for bookkeeping and accounting clerks; information clerks; tellers, secretaries; and
administrative assistants.
The job losses in this occupation group have been disproportionately
concentrated among jobs for workers with a high school diploma or less. Jobs
for these workers have declined by 1.6 million since December 2007, the largest
decline for this group of workers among all major occupation groups. Office and
administrative support jobs for workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, on the
other hand, added 781,000 jobs over the same period.
29 Vastag, “Exabytes: Documenting the 'Digital Age' and Huge Growth in Computing Capacity,” 2011.
Office and administrative
support occupations have
experienced the second-
highest decline in jobs.

CHAPTER 4.
Job Change by Industry
AMONG INDUSTRIES, CONSULTING AND BUSINESS
SERVICES EXPERIENCED THE LARGEST JOB
GROWTH IN THE RECOVERY.
Consulting and business services added the largest number of jobs in the
recovery — 2.5 million. At the other end of the workforce picture, the information
services sector is the only industry that continued to lose jobs in the recovery.
Manufacturing added the second-largest number of jobs in the recovery, 1.7
million, beginning to reverse its large losses during the Great Recession. Yet, the
industry is still 1 million jobs short of its employment level in December 2007,
when the recession began.
Overall, healthcare has experienced
the largest employment growth since
December 2007, adding 2.3 million
jobs. Construction is the industry
that has recovered the least from its
large recession job losses; it remains
1.6 million jobs short of its 2007
employment level.
In four industries — healthcare services;
education services; leisure and
hospitality services; and government
services — employment has grown during both the recession and the recovery
(Figure 4.1). The healthcare services sector grew by 5 percent in the recession and
8 percent in the recovery.
Those with the most
years of college were the
last fired in the recession
and the first hired in the
recovery.

Figure 4.1. While most industries have recovered their recession job losses,
construction and manufacturing are lagging substantially behind.
adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed using four-month moving average.
-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20
Job change in recoveryJob change in recession
Construction
Manufacturing
Transportation and utilities services
Information services
Financial services
Wholesale and retail trade services
All industries
Consulting and business services
Personal services
Natural resources
Leisure and hospitality services
Government services
Education services
Healthcare services 8%
3%
2%
13%
17%
5%
16%
8%
4%
8%
-6%
12%
13%
9%
5%
5%
2%
1%
-1%
-1%
-3%
-5%
-6%
-8%
-8%
-11%
-17%
-21%
Percent Change in Jobs

Nearly all industry sectors are shifting toward a more-educated workforce (Table
4.1). Both the industries that traditionally employed mostly workers with a college
degree and those that traditionally employed workers with a high school diploma
or less are showing signs of upskilling. The two industries that traditionally
hired large numbers of workers without a college degree — construction and
manufacturing — are shifting toward workers with more education than a high
school diploma. Of the 834,000 jobs added in construction during the recovery,
about 450,000 (or 54 percent) have gone to workers with a high school
education or less. Most telling is the manufacturing sector: of the 1.7 million
jobs that have been gained since the onset of the recovery, only 214,000 (or 12
percent) have gone to workers with a high school diploma or less.
In a number of industries that traditionally employ workers with a college
degree — such as information services; financial services; education services;
and government services — the long-term shift toward more highly-educated
workers has intensified during the recession and recovery. Workers with a
Bachelor’s degree or higher have gained jobs during the recovery, while those
with less education have continued to lose jobs in those industries. The divergent
employment trends for workers with different education levels are primarily tied
to structural changes in these industry sectors, rather than anything specific to
this recovery.
Similarly, in financial services and government services, increasing reliance on
computers and information technology has moved these sectors toward greater
demand for skilled workers. The government services industry has experienced
this shift toward more educated workers for at least the last three decades. The
share of workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher in government services has
increased from 31 percent in 1989 to 48 percent in 2016.
Leisure and hospitality has been the main source of jobs for workers with less
education. Of the 1.5 million jobs this industry added in the recovery, 71 percent
were for workers with an Associate’s degree or less.

Table 4.1. The healthcare industry has had the largest growth since December
2007, adding 2.2 million jobs.
MAJOR
INDUSTRY
SECTOR
RECESSION
Job change Dec. 2007-Jan. 2010
(in thousands)
RECOVERY
Job change Jan. 2010-Jan. 2016
(in thousands)
NET CHANGE
Job change Dec. 2007-Jan. 2016
(in thousands)
High
school
or less
Some
college/
AA
BA or
higher
Total
High
school or
less
Some
college/
AA
BA or
higher
Total
High
school or
less
Some
college/
AA
BA or
higher
Total
Healthcare services 189 464 146 799 -473 276 1,672 1,475 -284 741 1,818 2,275
Consulting and business
services
-163 -140 -110 -412 214 345 1,947 2,506 50 206 1,837 2,093
Leisure and hospitality
services
-215 116 174 75 614 486 439 1,539 399 602 613 1,615
Education services -69 139 499 569 -292 35 695 438 -361 174 1,194 1,007
Natural resources -83 25 41 -18 173 55 244 472 89 80 285 455
Personal services -195 99 11 -85 -19 83 275 339 -213 182 286 254
Government services 44 -16 94 122 -269 -92 489 128 -225 -108 583 250
Transportation and
utilities services
-451 -319 -85 -855 226 346 307 879 -225 27 222 24
Financial services -388 -290 -104 -782 -121 111 731 721 -509 -179 627 -60
Wholesale and retail
trade services
-781 -315 -39 -1,135 -381 616 497 733 -1,161 301 458 -402
Information services -147 -102 -12 -261 -255 -75 136 -195 -402 -177 124 -456
Manufacturing -1,563 -808 -375 -2,745 214 724 785 1,723 -1,349 -83 409 -1,023
Construction -1,789 -608 -54 -2,451 449 179 206 834 -1,340 -429 153 -1,617
Total -5,611 -1,752 187 -7,176 80 3,089 8,424 11,592 -5,531 1,337 8,611 4,416
adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed using four-month moving average.
Consulting and business services
Consulting and business services had the largest job gains of any industry during
the recovery, adding 2.5 million jobs between January 2010 and January 2016. This
industry now has 2.1 million more jobs than it had prior to the recession.
The consulting and business services industry employs workers who provide
consulting, temporary help, technical support, and network computing and
communications support to the complex organizational networks that typify the

postindustrial economy. The consulting and business services industry sector is now
the third-largest industry by employment. It employs 12 percent of all workers.
Consulting and business services also added the most jobs for workers with a
Bachelor’s degree or higher during the recovery: nearly 2 million jobs. Even though
workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher make up only half of the consulting
and business services workforce, they accounted for 78 percent of the job gains
in this industry during the recovery. Workers in this industry with an Associate’s
degree or some college credit have gained 345,000 jobs during the recovery, after
losing 140,000 jobs in the recession. Workers with a high school diploma or less
gained 214,000 jobs in consulting and business services during the recovery after
losing 163,000 jobs in the recession. So, while workers at each education level have
experienced net positive job growth since December 2007, workers with a Bachelor’s
degree or higher have experienced the largest job gains. Legal services had the
largest job gains within the consulting and business services industry sector.30
Financial services
The financial services industry has grown markedly over the decades preceding
the Great Recession, as a result of several factors. Among these are the shift from
defined-benefit to defined-contribution retirement plans; increasing consumer
debt for mortgages, postsecondary education, and consumer durables, such as
automobiles; and the globalization of financial services. Workers in this sector
were hit hard by the Great Recession, with jobs declining by 782,000 between
December 2007 and January 2010. This was largely because the economic crisis
was triggered by a financial and housing market collapse, and the resulting layoffs
were significant. Because of the industry’s role in modern economic institutions,
it has made solid progress during the recovery. The financial services industry
gained 721,000 jobs between January 2010 and January 2016, but it still remains
60,000 jobs short of its pre-recession employment.
Healthcare services
The healthcare services industry has been growing solidly since the middle of the
last century. The share of consumer and public spending on healthcare has grown
from 5 percent in 1947 to 20 percent in 2007.31
In 1947, this industry accounted for
2007-2016.

only 5 percent of employment, and now it is the largest industry, accounting for 14
percent of all workers.32
An aging population and the rapid advance of health technologies are driving the
growth in healthcare services. By 2030, approximately 78 million Baby Boomers will
be over 65 — a segment of the population that accounts for 26 percent of physician
office visits, 38 percent of emergency medical service responses, 34 percent of
prescriptions, and 90 percent of nursing home residents.33
New technologies and
drugs have allowed people to live to advanced ages, when healthcare needs are
higher than normal. Technology advances also ensure increased survival rates from
major diseases, but trigger increased costs of critical recovery care. Indeed, such cost
pressures affect growth — as well as the distribution of growth — shifting treatment
from hospitals to less expensive outpatient settings in practitioners’ offices, home
healthcare, and nursing and residential facilities.
Even in the challenging economy of the past eight years, through the recession
and recovery, the healthcare services industry has been a particularly strong
generator of jobs. It has added 2.3 million jobs since the beginning of the
recession, more than any other industry, including the 799,000 jobs it added
during the recession. During the recovery, between January 2010 and January
2016, the healthcare services industry added nearly 1.5 million jobs, led by gains in
ambulatory and emergency health services.34
Manufacturing
The manufacturing industry includes those companies that make nondurable
goods that are consumed shortly after being purchased and have to be replaced
on a regular basis, such as cosmetics or office supplies, and durable goods that
last for several years, such as cars and furniture. Manufacturing was once the
nation’s largest employer, but automation and globalization have contributed
to its long-term decline. Between 1967 and 2007, the share of value added
to the economy by manufacturing declined from 31 percent to 16 percent.35
Manufacturing still has the highest output among industries,36
but is now the
fourth-largest industry by employment, accounting for 10 percent of all workers.
1947-2016.
33 Rickets, “The Healthcare Workforce: Will It Be Ready as the Boomers Age? A Review of How We Can Know (or
Not Know) the Answer,” 2011.
2007-2016.
36 Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl, Recovery: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2020, 2013.

The long-term decline in manufacturing has been accelerated by the Great
Recession. Manufacturing was the hardest-hit industry in the Great Recession,
losing 2.7 million jobs between December 2007 and January 2010. Workers with a
high school diploma or less experienced the brunt of the losses, accounting for 1.6
million jobs lost in manufacturing during the recession.
The manufacturing sector has added a healthy number of jobs during the
recovery: 1.7 million. Wood products manufacturing; automobile manufacturing;
and fabricated metal products manufacturing have experienced the largest gains
in the manufacturing sector.37
The recovery in manufacturing has been aided by
the revival in American car manufacturing and the reshoring of manufacturing jobs
from overseas. U.S. jobs created from reshoring and foreign direct investment in
manufacturing have grown from around 10,000 in 2010 to 60,000 in 2014, with
over half of reshoring jobs returning from China.38
These gains, however, must be put into the context of the 2.7 million jobs lost in
manufacturing during the recession. Thus, manufacturing remains 1 million jobs
short of the job level before the recession began.
Leisure and hospitality services
Leisure and hospitality services has been one of the main sources of job
opportunities for workers with less than a Bachelor’s degree. The share of spending
devoted to recreation and leisure has grown substantially since the middle of the
20th century, from 8 percent of consumer and public spending in 1947 to 14 percent
in 2007.39
This industry added 1.5 million jobs during the recovery; 71 percent
of them went to workers with an Associate’s degree or less. While leisure and
hospitality services is the industry responsible for the largest job gains for workers
with a high school diploma or less since December 2007, and one of only three
industries for which this group of workers has experienced job gains (the other
two being consulting and business services and natural resources), workers with a
postsecondary education still experienced larger job gains in the industry over this
period. While workers with a high school diploma or less gained 399,000 jobs in this
industry since the beginning of the Great Recession, workers with an Associate’s
degree or some college gained 602,000, and workers with a Bachelor’s degree or
higher gained 613,000. Within the leisure and hospitality services sector, the largest
job growth has been in restaurants and other eateries.40
2007-2016.
38 Reshoring Initiative, Reshoring Initiative Data Report: Reshoring and FDI Boost Manufacturing in 2014, 2014,
2007-2015.

Information services
The information services industry
is the only industry sector that
continued to lose jobs during the
recovery, shedding 195,000 jobs
between January 2010 and January
2016. The industry has shed 456,000
jobs since December 2007. The job
losses in the information services
industry are part of a continuing shift
from print media to online media, with
most of the job losses occurring in
traditional print media and most of the job gains coming from electronic (online
and software) publishing and data processing and hosting services.41
The new
information media are more productive than the old ones, so, in part, employment
in this industry is declining because of productivity gains. This shift to high-tech
media has also increased the skill requirements for jobs in this industry. The
industry has added 124,000 jobs for workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher
since December 2007, even as the number of jobs for workers with less education
had declined. This trend indicates that even as this sector is moving away from
traditional print media, there are still job opportunities in new electronic and
computing communications technologies.
Construction
The construction industry’s woes are tied mostly to housing. The industry saw
2.5 million jobs eliminated amidst the bursting of the housing bubble and the
increased number of home foreclosures. Home ownership is at its lowest rate
in 20 years.42
The construction industry is showing some signs of recovery,
with a gain of 834,000 jobs amid a slight rebound in new single-family home
sales and increased spending on commercial construction.43
Still, this industry
has experienced the largest overall job losses of any sector compared to its
employment levels in December 2007. The largest job gains in construction during
the recovery were among specialty contractors, in particular building-equipment
contractors and plumbing and HVAC contractors.44
41 Ibid.
42 Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analysis of U.S. Census Bureau of Housing
Vacancies and Homeownership data, 1990-2015.
43 Ibid.
2007-2016.
Workers with a high school
diploma or less have
essentially experienced no
job recovery.

Natural Resources
Jobs in the natural resources industry have grown by 17 percent during the
recovery, mostly because of the boom in domestic production of oil and natural
gas. The largest employment gains came in oil and gas operations and support
for oil and gas operations industries.45
However, it remains a comparatively small
industry, so the growth translated to just 472,000 jobs. Also, the nature of the
industry makes employment volatile. The drop in international oil prices and
shifting policies in the Middle East have led to declining employment
in the industry since September 2014 and have put a serious question
mark over the sustainability of growth in this industry.
Further, like almost all industries, the natural resources industry
sector has increasingly shifted toward a more educated workforce.
This industry has long employed mostly less-educated workers — 78
percent of the natural resources workforce has an Associate’s degree
or less. However, since the beginning of the recovery, workers with
a Bachelor’s degree or higher have accounted for more than
half of the job gains in this industry. This shift, in part, has
been driven by a need for more advanced technology in
the exploration for shale oil and gas, which in turn has
increased the demand for more skilled workers to operate
the necessary technology.
2007-2015.

Conclusion
The steady job growth and falling unemployment rate offer some reassurance
that the economy is on the right track. Yet, the long-term structural changes
accelerated by the cyclical impact of the Great Recession have resulted in a very
unequal recovery. During the recession, the worst economic downturn since the
Great Depression, workers without postsecondary education suffered tremendous
job losses. The recovery has been virtually nonexistent for less-educated workers.
Men without a college degree were traditionally able to make their way into
the middle class through manufacturing and construction jobs, and women
without a college degree could get middle class jobs in office and administrative
support occupations. These pathways are increasingly closing down, leaving
few opportunities to access the middle class without postsecondary education.
By contrast, for most workers with a Bachelor’s degree or higher, the recovery
has resulted in a strong job market. These recent economic trends have made
it clearer than ever that a college degree continues to be the most important
economic asset for those who want to succeed in the labor market.
The economy is seeing a continuing
scouring out of low-skill jobs in
favor of high-skill jobs. This makes
the acquisition of postsecondary
education an essential prerequisite
to participate in the 21st century
labor market. Workers with a high
school diploma or less must attain
postsecondary credentials if they want
to compete effectively in growing high-skill career fields. The nation must face up
to a need to train more of its workers for the growing high-skill jobs that play an
increasingly central role in the post-Great Recession economy.
Bachelor’s degree-holders
gained the most jobs
in the recovery.

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APPENDIX:
Data Sources
and Methodology
This report uses data from Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey
administered by the U.S. Census Bureau on behalf of the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS), and in some places is supplemented by other data sources, as
indicated in specific sections of the report. The CPS surveys from January 1989 to
January 2016 are used to estimate the employment (18 and over) by educational
attainment, industry, and occupation. The monthly employment numbers are
seasonally adjusted using the U.S. Census Bureau X-12 procedure and smoothed
using a four-month moving average.
The Great Recession period is considered to be from December 2007 to January
2010. The recovery period is considered to be from January 2010 to January 2016.
The “net change” refers to the combination of the two periods, from December
2007 to January 2016. The Great Recession employment change data has been
adjusted for consistency with The College Advantage (Carnevale, Jayasundera,
and Cheah, 2012), the Center’s previous report on employment change in the
Great Recession and recovery by workers’ education, industry, and occupation.
The workers’ educational attainment level is presented using four levels: high school
diploma or less, some college/Associate’s degree, Bachelor’s degree, and Master’s
degree or higher. In some sections of the report the educational attainment level of
workers has been further aggregated to three levels: high school diploma or less,
some college/Associate’s degree, and Bachelor’s degree or higher.
The job change by occupation analysis uses 23 major occupation groups,
which are further aggregated into three tiers based on educational attainment
of workers within each occupation group: high-skill occupations, middle-skill
occupations, and low-skill occupations. High-skill occupations are those for which
50 percent or more of workers have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Middle-skill
occupations are those for which 50 percent to 75 percent of workers have at least
some postsecondary education. Low-skill occupations are those for which at least
50 percent have no education beyond high school.
The industry analysis uses 13 major industry sectors. In addition, where relevant,
this is supplemented by trends among more detailed industries based on data
from the BLS Current Employment Statistics survey.

CAMERICA’S DIVIDED RECOVERY COLLEGE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS

Center
on Education
and the Workforce
The Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots
can be accessed online at cew.georgetown.edu/dividedrecovery
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